Graffiti Writings
by the.last.of.the.crazy.people
Summary: [slash D/H] Draco catches a glimpse of what Harry can't say aloud. In the sharing of a secret, they are both pulled into something far beyond themselves.
1. lay back and let me show you another way

A/N: Meh. There'll be slash next chapter, this is just me being vague.  
  
Disclaimers: What's the chance that JK Rowling will ever read my crappy fanfic? Well sue me if you want, all I own are some socks and the cardboard box I sleep in.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Writings on the Walls of the Skull  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter One  
[lay back and let me show you another way]  
  
  
  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
Didn't they think of this!? In all their brilliance in constructing this little *haven*, didn't they think for once of...  
  
  
God.  
  
  
They didn't, they didn't... no one thought of how five years of sleeping in a room with four other people breathing, whispering, listening, watching, could drive a boy insane.  
  
  
"Ron."  
  
  
Harry's voice fell flat and he was suddenly intoxicated by the closeness of the bed's curtains around him, stifling and choking him- he couldn't get out, he couldn't go out, he couldn't...  
  
  
He laid down on his back trembling, and the moment fused sickeningly with every other night past present and future that he'd found himself lying so still there, shaking, trying failingly to contain himself.  
  
  
"Ron. Ron, Ron, Ron, Ron, Ron."  
  
  
He realized that he was speaking so softly, his breathing so wracked, he couldn't himself discern  
the words. He wouldn't hear. No one would come.  
  
  
Here, he thought, it should end. In despair.  
  
  
But it kept going.  
  
  
Over and over.  
  
  
Forever and ever unending...  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
Ron ran his fingers through the tufts of his flaming hair, wondering hwo much of himself was really alive at any given time and then dismissing the thoughts as too Harryish. Concern swept him, and then he turned his attentions to a chess game he was playing out in his mind, which occupied him for the next little while.  
  
  
He hadn't the longest attention span in the world, but it wasn't for lack of trying. His train of thoughts was not a train at all, nor anything that could occupy much rational physical space. No, his was a series of random explosions that only served to rattle the debris left behind from last night's fit of passive insomnia.  
  
  
It was dawn. He always woke at dawn. Or, in winter, when he thought dawn should be. The swells of stormy grey that still quieted the world seemed demented and wrong, completely wrong. He thought to set the sky on fire, and it was a lingering abstraction on his mind.  
  
  
Ron was a philosopher. Or, rather, he thought at the oddest times, when no one needed any thinking to be done.  
  
  
He rose from his bed and paced the room, grabbed Harry's invisibility cloak from where it lay folded haphazardly in his open trunk and draped it with a hushed 'swish' around his shoulders. It had a nice weight on him.  
  
  
Outside, it had begun to snow. He wondered if anyone had noticed.  
  
  
Harry was awake in his bed. Ron turned; he hadn't seen, it was too dark. But he could hear Harry now rocking back and forth, as if he were sitting cross-legged and hunched over on his mattress.  
  
  
The drapes concealed him completely. The mattress kept making the rocking noise, not a squeaking, but a crinkling of soft blankets and a weighted depression of the bed as he went forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards... forwards...  
  
  
Ron blushed furiously and drew the cloak over his face. Then, on a whim, he walked hesitantly out of the room and followed the sound of his own footsteps down to the common room where he lit a fire and watched the sun come up from the window near the high ornate ceiling before wandering back to bed.  
  
  
None of the others even knew he was gone.  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
[I'm looking at you from behind myself, and I can see the outlined profile of my wax expression. I wish I could force the secret from parting in my marble lips, but my breath will not move and my head spins instead of forming words. So I'm trapped, the silent powerless puppeteer behind the face you see. The redness of your hair is such a comfort though, so I hope one day you'll know that.]  
  
  
Somehow I made it to the Hall. Somehow I made it to the day. Somehow... I transcended the night...  
  
  
"Hey Harry." I hear my own sigh of relief, and remember how anxious I was thinking you wouldn't notice me here.  
  
  
"Hey Ron." Where were you last night when the words were bursting from me?  
  
  
"How are you?" If you hadn't asked that way, maybe I could tell you.  
  
  
"I don't know." If knowing means that I could put it into words...  
  
  
"Are you alright?" Is it the sympathy you can't control or the sympathy you know that you should have that I hear in your voice that's so unnervingly level?  
  
  
"No."  
  
  
But I won't talk about it, not with you. You won't understand, but I'm still angry at you for sleeping last night while I was going insane.  
  
  
"Do you-"  
  
  
"No."  
  
  
Don't think I'm mad at you. You don't think I'm mad at you.  
  
  
"Okay."  
  
  
So I know you understand, but you can't understand.  
  
  
"Okay."  
  
  
So maybe you're all the friend you can be, but just not the friend I need. Because you know a part of me that would just get in the way if I tried...  
  
  
I guess I need a stranger, but I'll never find one. And that just leaves me all alone.  
  
  
Beside you at the breakfast table unable to speak.  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
Hello, my dearest one who understands.  
  
  
Draco sat on the edge of his bed, swaddled in a crushed velveteen blanket of sorts, something shimmery and invariably valuable. It was dark, the room was... dark... he'd blown the candle out to see the smoke and tried to follow the wispy stream into the ceiling where it simply diffused... that wasted, he was sitting hidden by the night in a room that seemed equally hidden from him. Very mysterious, very a-la-Malfoy.  
  
  
He stilled the waters in his goblet with a silvery stare, light gleaming off the muted grey and the swirling depths that was only a goblet of water. He took a sip, and it tasted metallic. He spit it out.  
  
  
Where were the house-elves at this hour? And extension of this thought could have led to a complaint to drive somehow the train of thought in his head, but it just hovered there. Where are the house-elves?  
  
  
They must be *somewhere*, after all. He jumped and the shadows altered suddenly around him, becoming startlingly brighter and more defined.  
  
  
Were they in the walls?  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
Harry wiped the sweat from his forehead and then realized that he wasn't sweating at all. Good, he supposed. He felt unnaturally cold, though. And he reached for his father's cloak which he'd packed for some reason in his back pack that day. He was carrying a back pack. For some reason, lately, he'd needed something solid slung over his shoulder and pressing heavily into his spine.  
  
  
He enjoyed sitting in the back of Potions class. He was stand-offish with the teacher and the dull repetition of stirring a churning cauldron for two long silent periods, ignored by the Slytherins and left to quietude by the Gryffindors, left him warm and still inside.  
  
  
And it was in Potions, strangely enough, that he felt most within the braces of Magic, the Magic that had captivated him when he'd been taken from the windswept cabin with the Dursleys so many years ago. Five years, he thought, not that many... but it was a lifetime.  
  
  
/... and even put a stopper in Death.../  
  
  
Had those been the exact words?  
  
  
Harry bent his emerald eyes, darkened but glittering, into the opening of his cauldron. They were brewing the Obsesciatus Potion; a draught that would watch the drinker from within. The spying potion. The insanity potion, really, for it was the victim's ultimate end...  
  
  
Betrayal, exposure, humiliation, and insanity. Four fates as sure and concrete as fact, swirling in his iron pot- created like lines traced by his fingertips was nothing more than reality transcended into possibility. His potion was the same green as his eyes and his thoughts wandered. What, then, could he see?  
  
  
"Mr. Malfoy, would you like to be the first to test your potion?"  
  
  
Could he pierce the image of those he looked upon?  
  
  
"How, sir? Isn't the potion..."  
  
  
"Extremely dangerous, yes. But there's a counterpotion I have ready, so... if you would choose a victim..."  
  
  
Or was it that he was meant more to see within himself, he mused, a sleepy smile crossing his blank face.  
  
  
"Or perhaps we should ease everyone's curiosities and find out exactly what Mr. Potter has been  
daydreaming about all class!"  
  
  
Silence.  
  
  
"Wh... what?"  
  
  
Professor Snape grinned, and Malfoy turned with a vial-full of his potion, which strangely was a glistening silver, towards the back of the classroom where Harry was shaking himself very violently from his thoughts.  
  
  
"Well, Mr. Potter? In the name of... what do your guardians call it, Science?"  
  
  
Harry swallowed, realizing what he had been sentenced to, and he stepped amid the snickers of the Slytherins towards Malfoy's cauldron. Scowls befouling both faces, he locked eyes with the pale boy and took the vial with grim determination.  
  
  
For really, he had nothing to hide, and Malfoy couldn't read specifics from the rudimentary mess they'd brewed...  
  
  
"Bottoms up, Potter!" Snape uttered with a disturbing grin on his face. He tipped the contents down his throat and felt the imidiate invasion.  
  
  
He's inside me.  
  
  
Convulsing, Harry threw himself forward onto the table and two Slytherin cauldrons went flying- Pansy Parkinson screamed somewhere from the right of the class and gasps were coming from all around him- he could see nothing, his were screwed shut, he lay and curled himself tighter and tighter...  
  
  
[Get out of me.]  
  
  
Distantly, he heard Snape shout a halting command over the muted delerium of the class's panicked babble, and there was silence as two iron hands grasped his arms and flipped him onto his back. At the sudden release of his clenched muscles a pain broke out over every edge of his body- his eyes became pits of fire, his throat closed suddenly, hysterically, and he began to kick furiously-  
  
  
[-GET OUT OF ME-]  
  
  
He was inside him, he was inside him, he was inside him...  
  
  
A vile sickness was penetrating every inch of his form, his organs, he squirmed, but now the hands were holding him down firmly. He heard the shout, now painfully void of control, afraid-  
  
  
"SWALLOW POTTER!"  
  
  
And he did. And it went black.  
  
  
There was a dull nausea washing over him but he breathed... it was black, the world was black, and he was beautifully emptied and numb.  
  
  
As if he were under water, the sounds were fading from his ears and he could hear the pressure of the air, the swells of the wind and everything all around him...  
  
  
Gone, all gone.  
  
  
"What did you see, Malfoy?"  
  
  
He heard the distant interrogation of his Potions Master, and he heard the shuddering reply in a low trembling voice, through the absence of tears and a body broken by sobs.  
  
  
"It was horrible... it was horrible..."  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
Stillness.  
  
  
Stillness in your eyes.  
  
  
You're watching me like you know something. Like you're afraid to watch me.  
  
  
Why are you fixated, why, why...  
  
  
Because. Ha ha...  
  
  
I can hear you.  
  
  
"I know..."  
  
  
But you're afraid as you say it.  
  
  
I think we are both out way beyond our depths.  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
  
  
  
TBC, I guess, if you like this enough for me to keep going. 


	2. i believe i can cure it all for you, dea...

A/N: I lied. Slash next chapter, this is just vague build-up to slash...  
  
  
Thanks for reading, everyone! You guys are stupendous :) Hey, to anyone who doesn't understand what's going on... all the stuff that's vague and weird, that's just my own craziness ranting. If you can guess from who's p.o.v. the rantings are supposed to be coming from, well *THUMBS UP*!  
  
  
Ah yes. No Ron/Harry in this, uck uck. Just friendshipness. I... think that's all, onward, then...  
  
  
[And...: I'm still not suuuuuuuuued... *flaunts blatant trademark violations* C'mon!]  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Graffiti Writings from the walls of the Skull  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter Two  
[i believe i can cure it all for you, dear]  
  
  
  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
  
  
  
His messy black hair twisted slightly in the breeze that seemed to sweep just above his head, missing him by a hair's breadth. He turned around instinctually, but-  
  
  
He hadn't been posessed of his usual calm reflexes as of late; he'd turned to find shadows, cats, strangers casting weird looks, friends with concern softening their patronizing stares, sometimes nothing at all. He wasn't paranoid, that much he knew. A paranoiac stays awake all night- [you stay awake all night]- but...  
  
  
And they think people are watching them. Well, he *knew* someone was watching him. It was more than a feeling, it was the conspicuous absence of a pale face wherever he went, and the fact that now wherever his footsteps fell, the world was empty.  
  
  
He knew the situation. The day he'd both discovered and rashly revealed that he was a Parselmouth, he'd had faced the same sudden stigma. The world had it's eyes suspiciously on him, but none of them *saw*, so it was okay...  
  
  
Now someone had seen. What, he had no clue at all, for apparently, the seer refused to speak of it.  
  
  
Dramatist.  
  
  
And so he walked in the rose gardens out back along the outside stone corridors of the courtyards, eaten away by thorns and ivy and moss, made into a Muggle's mystical dream.  
  
  
There was mist tangled in the leaves that dawn. As the airy morning light poured through, the clouds lit up with colorless light, descending on the places Harry dared to tread.  
  
  
They knew, they knew, they knew.  
  
  
[Yes, it *is* horrible, inside this mind of mine. Isn't it?]  
  
  
With a shudder and a sickly smile, Harry stiffened back an irrational tear that weighed depressingly behind his eyes, sending the familiar silent pains through his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose, and the base of his skull as if hands were digging mercilessly into his mind.  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
I could read this letter a thousand ways, but I will read it in one. I could write this letter in a thousand ways. I will write it in all of them. You won't read it the way I do. You won't read it at all. You'll only study the curves of my writing for mistrust and you'll see nothing at all.  
  
  
"Dear Lucius."  
  
  
Did you ever ask for me to speak? Did you ever beckon me towards you and beseech me my words? It was the same stark dissonance in your eyes every time I looked upon you, I know, I know, so don't bother reminding me.  
  
  
"It's bliss, the stillness here. All the students are suspended in the inalterable motions of their fixed collective consciousness, and not one will ever dare to think beyond."  
  
  
I'm lying, I know, and I note to myself the pure impersonal significance of the First Lie to Father. Unless, of course, concealment is a lie. And... and if you consider to be lies all the lies I would have told you had you asked, ever.  
  
  
"Dumbledore is as unapproachable as always, and Potter has sunk into a mindless stupor of some sort and-"  
  
  
A talent you infused me with was your miraculous disassociation.  
  
  
"-h..." Don't let the pen tremble. Don't let the... the resolution waver.  
  
  
"-he has failed to cause much disturbance of any kind, but instead tends to disappear more often and speak less to anyone."  
  
  
I wonder if it's just that we have a bond between us that is above all other fathers and sons, severed so much by the age and neglect between all generations. Because it's something terribly unique for me to write so much, to divulge this trivialities of my life to you so you can pick out what facts your Lord may deem 'good to know'. He's been like an honorary Father to you, so if you find some yearning and small satisfaction in this mindless subservience to him, then maybe it's an example I should learn to follow. For you never ask for my letter, but I never fail to write them. And he never asks for your betrayals, but you cut through flesh and mind to lay them at his feet, again and again, without fail.  
  
  
That's the key, I think, and twirl the quil amusedly at the tips of my pale fingers, never failing. For failure breaks the bond, and then I'm not your son anymore, and you are not my Father, not my Lord, but just...  
  
  
Should I be afraid of you? Nevermind that you could have my life erased and have my physical self torn to pieces before you. Is it something to be afraid of?  
  
  
In the end, I'll cease to be. And those who do not exist have no... painful memories, they... breathe not... and feel nothing.  
  
  
So there's no way you can harm me in a way I care about, in a way I fear. Though...  
  
  
"I am well,"  
  
  
The way you shame me is something I irrationalize. And I'll never die at your hand, no. My own. I am the only one to command my life, it is my secret if you ever cared enough to try and pry it from me. And so, now, it's just another though unspoken.  
  
  
I am well.  
  
  
I... am always puzzled over how to sign it. I'm your son but I can't say it. I love you in a way, but not the way that comes out in the word 'love'. And really all I want to write to you is that I am your loyal son, but I cannot; you aren't trailed by loyalty, you aren't sided by a son.  
  
  
I laugh in the shadows of my stoney room. Did they not think that five years sleeping in a box with four others would drive a boy insane? I can't stand their breathing, it's what destroys me. There's something broken about laughter in a cold empty room.  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
Draco decides to go for a walk, and he slips from his dormitory with the kind of heedless invisibility that he would so often withdraw into while wandering by himself. He finds himself in a rose garden and sits quietly upon the white stone wall, crumbled down in places and overgrown by the brambles, and the ancient gardens gone wild.  
  
  
"Hello," is the traditional response to his appearance, but he ignores it and stares with a secret smile into the grey of the sky.  
  
  
"Draco?"  
  
  
"I won't talk with you today, I believe... the silence contents me perfectly this afternoon."  
  
  
"Why are you here then?" The voice becomes puzzled and Draco chuckles in the depths of his throat.  
  
  
"Aren't you full of questions, then."  
  
  
"I'll leave." Pansy rose and stared pointedly at the colorless sun suspended in the sky. "I wish you'd let me speak with you here more, like you used to. I think you haven't learned the sound of my voice as much as I'd like."  
  
  
"I was selfish, you were selfish... but I just don't like having that much about myself known, Pansy."  
  
  
"You can tell me and I... I won't listen, I'll only hear."  
  
  
Draco is silent at this and Pansy realizes suddenly that she was both stunningly insightful and strikingly dumb at once. Not sure whether to be embarassed, she decides to side with mystery and step gracefully from the tangled brambles that cluster at the foot of the decaying wall, into the trees and out of sight.  
  
  
The tresses of a weeping willow tree caress her hair. She has an inquisitive face that is both violent and maternal when silent and cast in the dullest light. Her eyes become quite livid at nothing.  
  
  
Draco likes her as an object of beauty. Momentarily, he regrets ruining her with his few days of sudden surprising confidance.  
  
  
"I am stupid."  
  
  
Draco is talking to no one at all.  
  
  
"I'm talking to no one. I'm talking to myself." The willows bend around him to listen. Turning flustered and red-cheeked, he turns to examine the trees in depths, as well as the dimensions beyond them, but at last he is satisfied that Pansy is gone.  
  
  
His voice seems shocking and resonant, but he is only murmuring in a low vibrant key that he himself could probably only just decipher were he to listen with his ears instead of his mind.  
  
  
"I have no one to talk to. But I made that mistake before, I could... I could share my secrets with the world and have them love me and pity me instead of hate me and pass me by. Like a pedastalled statue of marble legacy, I'm...'  
  
  
'I need to be protected, God, how I need that veil of marble on me. Like I'm not safe without it's weight. So I carry and carry and carry it's weight."  
  
  
Here he stops mid-monologue and breaks, his voice cracked uncontrollably. He thinks to himself. There is no one he is speaking to, no ears to listen, and he has only the miles of silence to fill.  
  
  
"I hate myself."  
  
  
The roses rustle and the trees stand stretching even more towards the raging sky, the churning grey beyond the scope of Draco's vision.  
  
  
"I hate the sky. I hate the world. I hate that it will rain and stream and crash down on the world, soon, that the sky will *storm* and I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't!"  
  
  
Fixated, he brushes his hair back and holds his head throbbing between his straining hands. He can feel the tendons defined beneath the surface of his pearly outside.  
  
  
He can feel the heat of his tears bursting upwards like a fountain, or a spit of lava from the core of the earth, and breathes the chilled air deeply, more deeply than he needs, to ease them back and diffuse it all.  
  
  
"I CAN'T!"  
  
  
He wants it with every fibre and straining muscle in his being. His whole Self seems to transcend into desperate thirsting to shed his physical manifestation and cry, just cry without the burden of tears.  
  
  
For he is only flesh.  
  
  
He'd seen it, seen it, seen it... a beautiful nightmare and he ached with all his tortured body and pulsing ever-present mind to see it again.  
  
  
"Harry," was all he could whisper in halting throbs of words, hunched over and collapsed, sitting on the stoney wall. Amid the ivy, amid the moss, amid the weeping willows.  
  
  
He would head to Divining class soon. Guess, he thinks, what he will be foreseeing? Like a sudden lightness of his head, he thinks, I have found something Divine.  
  
  
It was new and tangible to call his name like this.  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
"Harry, are you alright?"  
  
  
Pause for a moment. Be shocked. And annoyed.  
  
  
"How many conversations have you started like that?"  
  
  
I turn to you and you're staring with eyes softened and rippling with waves of empathy. The Great Hall for a second contains only you. I want to dive into those pools of your eyes that seem so fathomless and unreachable. But I'm being mean.  
  
  
It feels good too. Because I want you to know I can be mean to you. I just don't want to drive you away.  
  
  
"I'm sorry,"  
  
  
You're not sorry, you're offended. And maybe a little hurt because you can't get through the way you'd like to.  
  
  
"It's okay," I say so you won't leave. Because I like being subjected to this passive torture, it makes me feel just a little farther from the weakness you keep pushing on me.  
  
  
"But-" and here you stop for a second and I can taste the indecision on your lips- "-do you, do you want to... talk about what's been going on?"  
  
  
You took a risk there, you said that something was 'going on'. No one's said it to my face before, I don't know what to say. I could let you in and keep you near me, know you're here and close, and trust you, and risk everything. Or I could bury you.  
  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
  
"You've been quiet. To yourself, you haven't talked to any of us- not even me, and you *always* talk to me. I know something happened to you, or something changed, and I want you to talk to me, Harry. We've never kept secrets, you haven't, I haven't, and... and I want to know. Because I care about you."  
  
  
So where were you on all the sleepless nights?  
  
  
"I care about you too, Ron." It's all I say.  
  
  
I do. Care about you, I mean. It makes me smile how much of a friend you've been. But you're just... somewhere outside the world I'm in right now, maybe forever. But we'll be friends again someday. And until then, we'll pass each other in the halls and you'll occasionally ask me how I am. I'll tell you the truth. I don't know. I'll always tell you the truth, Ron.  
  
  
"Okay," you say. It's your benediction and your frustration, it's you giving up, it's you not giving up... what do I say to a friend like you?  
  
  
"Okay."  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
"What are you doing?"  
  
  
The words were spat out with the kind of vindiction reserved usually only for those who genuinely enjoyed reproach.  
  
  
"Walking, sir," Potter answered, not really thinking. It was already prepared, he'd fixed for anything. As he walked he would construct to the clicking of his black shoe heels on the grey stones a thousand scenarios in which he'd be stopped.  
  
  
He rarely was stopped, that was the thing. No one tended to notice the long raven-haired spectacled boy in his uniformed robes, who could pass off as anywhere from a fourth to a sixth year and bore no particular visual connection from afar to any house or recognizable social clump.  
  
  
"Walking alone in the middle of the afternoon?"  
  
  
"It's only eleven a.m., Professor," Harry said softly without much deliberate monotony to his voice. He'd turned around by now and found that it was Snape behind him, about fifteen feet trailing and almost lost in the distance of their conversation.  
  
  
"Nevertheless, Potter, haven't you any classes, or... rubbish to occupy you? Hm?"  
  
  
"No sir."  
  
  
"So... what exactly is on your mind, that you should be wandering..."  
  
  
A twisted smirk bewitched his face into the semblence of a sated gargoyle.  
  
  
"...so aimlessly?"  
  
  
Harry's eyebrow went up in silence, and there was an undetermined stiffness between them. The boy would have glared or else felt some sort of animosity for the menacing professor, but at the moment his confusion with what Snape meant exactly, mixed up with the general disassosciation he was wallowing in, left him in a bit of a stupor.  
  
  
"I don't exactly understand you, sir," he stated, his apathy doubling as cool understanding control, which made him feel a little more grounded, but just a little.  
  
  
"Well... you seemed to leave a rather violent impression on Mr Malfoy, Mr Potter. And I thought your animosities were reserved for me alone. I must say, after all these years of so happily absorbing your resentful little stares, I feel a bit... how shall I say it... sad? That you've found someone more deserving of your eyes..."  
  
  
His tongue stayed poisonously between his teeth, hissing softly the last syllable, and Harry shuddered. So he thinks I'm after Malfoy then... the idiot...  
  
  
Malfoy was... never meant to see what I think. It wasn't for him.  
  
  
It wasn't for anyone.  
  
  
And so he *was* thinking about Potions class, the vindictive serpent that he was... and he was standing there in all his ominous robes and aged pretenses of wisdom (how much is real?) trying to faze me into some sort of sudden letting down of my guard? A confidance? Or is he just trying to humiliate me in front of myself?  
  
  
"I have no devices on anybody, Professor." Here he stopped, sucked suddenly into himself and overwhelmed by the beast he had unleashed. Want. Want. I don't want to hurt anyone. And the devices I have, my God, if you could know, if you could only know of them. A sudden pleading arose from the pit of his throat but seemed to scream at Harry alone- tell him, it whispered sharply, metallically, like razors grazing beautifully the scars of his burned and silenced throat. Tell him. Tell him. No. It's too-  
  
  
Predictable.  
  
  
...  
  
  
Say 'Mr Potter, are you alright?' Say anything, anything for me to have an excuse to spill this cracking dam of nameless emotion and directionless rage on you. Give me a word, Professor, it's all I need... a word to break the wall. And I'll curse you.  
  
  
Through foam-filled ears and veiled eyes, It never came. Harry's vision crumbled into tiny bits, the fragments falling away to leave blots of inky nothingness, black and swirling and cosmic.  
  
  
He would only realize he'd passed out when he awoke, which was always the case. And he'd be humiliated and despairing for a moment, but now he was in a sick unavoidable moment that was mercifully being relieved right now by the breathy kiss of unconsciousness.  
  
  
"Would you like for me to summon Mme Pomfrey, Mr Potter?"  
  
  
He shook his head.  
  
  
"Are you well?"  
  
  
"No." God, I'm not well... cure me, cure me, but you can't.  
  
  
"I'll get her immediately," Snape ended the tension and stepped away, a quiver on his last words as his guile washed away into submission. And he seemed to stumble off rather than sweep away; all his grace was gone in just an instant.  
  
  
You can't know.  
  
  
How strange that Harry's mind could not bend itself around those few minutes of strained pauses and silences, the slow reaction as he'd bent forward and swayed, eyes pressing shut as if against some terrible vision. It occured to him later the thing he'd been replaying without warning- being joined by what felt like a fatal, stupid mistake to a boy, a boy.  
  
  
As he slipped to the floor, it was only sickness he could feel. And he repeated to himself the reassuring mantra of his own sanity, which did nothing at all.  
  
  
Save me.  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
Save you I will, Draco breathed suddenly, almost gasping on the rush of air. He dropped his cup of Divining Tea and the clear searing liuid flew across the floor, dashing the mess of black leaves over the rugs and the polished hardwood.  
  
  
"Well," Professor Trelawny's voice came, lyrical and methodical, "Read them."  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
He awoke in Mme Pomfrey's hospital wing in a bed of pure sterile white. He'd been thinking at the moment that he awoke that it must be difficult to enjoy such responsibilities as a Professor had; Snape hadn't made any report of the incident in Potions to Dumbledore, obviously, and no one had spoken of it.  
  
  
Interesting, he mused, that it wasn't a strained avoidance, but a genuine forgetfulness; no one really remembered that anything had happened, it was simpler that way.  
  
  
So many simple ways to get around things.  
  
  
"Mr Potter!" came the flustered greeting, just as Harry's wandering thoughts were getting to the good part, the denouncement... he licked his lips as the nurse, wide-eyed and teary with relief, bustled in on him, throwing wide the curtains on his makeshift 'room' and wheeling in her tiny cart of jars and oddities.  
  
  
He'd been savoring the prospect of mentally slandering Snape for a good few minutes with no one to offer reproach. Ah well, he thought, for he had all the time in the world. But he was heavily drugged, so coherence wasn't really a factor in his appeasement.  
  
  
"Up already... wonderful..." she stood up from where she had been bent over, searching out a bottle of something standard and horrid. "What *happened* to you, my dear boy? Merlin's Beard, if you're not here because a Bludger crippled you, or You-Know-Who, Merlin forbid it, attacked the school, or... or some idiot took the bones right out of your arm-" Harry smiled sickly, "- you're just collapsing on your own! My word... now let's give you a little more of THIS-"  
  
  
The faithful nurse obviously was so troubled by whatever state things were in at the moment that she'd shut herself into a bustling world of her own frazzled commentary, and attacked Harry visciously with the medecine without a word of warning, still exclaiming under her breath. Harry yelped, then swallowed the, as normal, foul cup of, this time, deep plum colored liquid. He gagged.  
  
  
"Alright there, deary," Mme Pomfrey upon reflex asked, but turned away before he could give an answer. He scowled.  
  
  
"What *is* this stuff? It's disgusting, it's..." Crabbe in a glass, he thought, and almost chuckled.  
  
  
"Hm? Oh yes, my poor boy... uh... Visciatus Potion, mild dose, meant to level you out, you know, should stop the fainting, or any bursts of energy that could..."  
  
  
"It has chunks in it!"  
  
  
"That'll be the, uh... the..." here she trailed off, got a puzzled look in her eyes, and then smiled and grabbed her tray and pushed off to another bed without a word. Harry groaned and sunk down into his cot.  
  
  
He felt physically a bit better. Had anyone come to see him? As if on cue, the door to the hospital wing remained shut, and Harry's eyes fell back to his body, swaddled in the ivory bedsheets.  
  
  
He'd slept a whole day? It felt like it... outside he could see the sun setting and his Gryffindor Quidditch team circling the pitch, warming up for practice.   
  
  
He sighed. He *did* feel physically better. His body had taken on the warm motionless sensation of a weightless thing being caressed from all around by furs, or the pleasant pulsing aliveness of human arms. He hated being sick, he could have slept on his own. He loathed having collapsed before Snape. Snape. Who made him swallow a potion to surrender his own mind. Snape who'd... who'd thrust such betrayal...  
  
  
Stupid words that go on and on, blah blah. So bloody sick of this rot, always thinking, thinking, thinking. Can't I bloody well stop, no! No. Bloody.  
  
  
He wanted to get up.  
  
  
And go to practice. To be normal; the desire clutched him suddenly by surprise and held him there, enraptured. He could be normal, he wanted to, had to be... normal. Go out and play Quidditch then, go on.  
  
  
"Mme Pomfrey?"  
  
  
"In a minute, dear..." came the distant voice.  
  
  
"But... Mme... MME POMFREY!"  
  
  
His maddened shriek deafened his ears and left a thudding in his head. His lungs were empty. He collapsed into himself upon the thin white mattress, smiled, laughed. The nurse ran in.  
  
  
"Lord, what!?"  
  
  
"I'm... I think I'm better."  
  
  
She had a genuine look of terror on her face.  
  
  
Sheepish, Potter.  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
Lying on my back; it always seems like I'm lying on my back. Sent the letter to father, check. And I wonder if he'll reply. Of course not. I'm the voice with which he reassures himself, his deaf mute self.  
  
  
To be deprived of all sense, like that... my.  
  
  
I don't want to think about yesterday, is all I insist upon right now. So I'm lying on my back.  
  
  
I could go out. Breathe the fresh air. Yes, I realize, I'm quite tired of this boxed in feeling...  
  
  
And the sudden flashback sways me, and I'm there again. The potion that somehow brewed the maker into it... inside of him, and I was trapped, so trapped, as if I was bound in the heaviest of shackles and alone on a cold and desert plain...  
  
  
Screaming.  
  
  
There were demons in my head, clawing to get out, and I felt my skull give way and the fire burst from my eyes. Scream, scream-  
  
  
Caught in my throat, no one could hear me. And then the fingers descended and I hollered out in real life and was so suddenly breathlessly SAFE-  
  
  
Snape had saved *him*, of course. I was given a Chocolate Frog.  
  
  
It was horrible. It was horrible... my head felt like it was going to split in two. For a second I felt sure I could trace a lightening bolt down the center of my face. And my finger went instinctively to the smooth pale skin, unscarred, of my forehead. Nothing. And everything. It wasn't upon me, it was within me.  
  
  
Still, I can feel it throbbing. I lay, I lay, I can't get up... the flashback somehow fades away and I'm panting into my pillow clutched over my eyes, not crying but heaving. Something living surging through my body.  
  
  
But *I* was within *him*.  
  
  
What then could he have done to me? I pick up the parchment from my bedside, the owl is gone, but I'll write a letter anyway. And I grab the quill, and realize my hand is shaking beyond my own force to still it.  
  
  
'Dear...'  
  
  
But I have no one to write to. I cross it out. It disappears. The magic of the paper, or the magic of my will?  
  
  
'Potter,  
  
  
I don't know what you've done to me. But you've put something inside of me. Perhaps I cannot be contained by your mind. Perhaps I cannot accept the pulses that govern you. I have known... suffering. But you...  
  
  
I don't know you.'  
  
  
[And I want to.]  
  
  
There's something delicious about your pain, Potter, I think as I fold the parchment in two and hold it between my palms, catching the warmth in the velvet paper. I wonder where you are.  
  
  
In the walls, Potter? I wouldn't put it beyond you.  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
Come into me, for you are my dream  
  
And I'll inhale you.  
  
Taken upon the crest of my evening breaths  
  
I'll taste the air about you  
  
And sense you from afar  
  
And make you something of my own.  
  
Driven from the abyss of what I've named my soul:  
  
The mysterious sounds i barely hear  
  
Over the scarcely ceasing screams i dare not yell,  
  
The dark abstractions of what you've deemed my Self  
  
Another entity.  
  
So you believe you know me  
  
Believing in the things you do...  
  
Stellar that you can believe in anything.  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N: Longer and more fragmented, I know. If there comes another chapter, it'll be slashier and more... what's the opposite of fragmented? Clumpier?  
  
  
Oh, and don't you start getting the notion that I've got self-esteem or any sort of applicable work ethic, I still need to be told! Meaning R&R, cause it's nice to do :) 


	3. eyes of a fallen angel, eyes of a tradge...

A/N: Apologies for the delay. In the midst of December exams. *shivers*  
  
  
  
At any rate, there is much deliberation over Draco's Feelings For His Stalkee. I promised clumpiness and there's... no clumpiness at all, sadly. But everything seems to have to do with the plot, so go me, I guess.  
  
  
  
bluevanilla: hey, it's cool you like it! *smiles* i think i'll keep it somewhat simply cause it's the style of the story :) ~ hylaite: here 'tis. clumpiness for you to judge. :) ~ jabberwocky: haha... like this feeling of complete befuddlement then? welcome to my mind. this is why i don't need drugs, *lol* ~ Evil-Aurors-of-DEATH: *lol* i love your name. and the praise, thanks! ~ Anya Dvorak: alright, i stuck in the names of the POVs, hope it clears it up somewhat. ~ beautiful disaster: thanks! *stuffs antonyms in pocket for future use* ~ Katie, rissa: thanks, will do! ~ mistykasumi: i'll take 'different and confusing' as a compliment, *lol* thanks :) ~ Ayanagami: damn you're evil! here's some more darkness for ya :) ~ Goddess JacquesPierre: *lmao* c'est cute, ca! glad to know my fic's being clicked on by the... less 'normal' fraction of the population... heh...  
  
  
  
[Disclaimer: Go figure. ^_^]  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Graffiti Writings...  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter Three  
[eyes of a fallen angel, eyes of a tragedy]  
  
  
  
  
  
  
|malfoy|  
  
  
I will. I will. I need to. I will.  
  
  
Damn these assurances that never seem to get me anywhere. I'm no more convinced than I was before, before, before...  
  
  
It's two days since Potions and where are you? I'm in the rose garden screaming under silencing spells. I'm leaving empty beds throughout the night. I'm everywhere but where I'm supposed to be.  
  
  
And I will talk to you, I will talk to you, I need to talk to you.  
  
  
I won't talk to you. I WILL talk to you. I need to ask you, but the question is impossible to form.  
  
  
[Let me into you again.]  
  
  
You'll say no. You have to say no, I saw you bend backwards and break yourself just to get me out the first time. I remember, it was only two days ago. Only two days! And I haven't slept at all. And everything I've eaten I've thrown up because I can't stand to have something inside of me like you had me inside of you.  
  
  
Of course you'll say no. I know this. I still want to talk to you though. Maybe just get you to say something to me, to hear what you sound like when talking, not insulting or defending or spitting out vengences.  
  
  
I want to see your face the way you look upon your friends. I should become invisible.  
  
  
You showed me so *little* you liar, you whore! You bit the tears from my eyes and now I'm crying! You shoved a crucible down my throat and now I'm choking on you! Now I'm breathing you! Now I'm speaking with your voice in my head!  
  
  
I'll go to Potions and I'll pray you're there. But you won't be. How could you be after the impossibility of before?  
  
  
There's no before.  
  
  
God, please be there. Whatever God posesses you, let you please be in that room today.  
  
  
  
+++  
|potter|  
+++  
  
  
  
"I don't think it's very wise, Mr Potter."  
  
  
Harry lay back in his bed. His outburst had prompted the speculations of a few teachers as to his state of well-being, which in effect had produced several binding spells around his legs and arms and a set expression of lewd distaste plastered on his sternly tightened lips.  
  
  
"I'd like to go to class. I'd like to learn today. I believe I'm well enough, and isn't it the reason I'm here-"  
  
  
"Mr Potter-" Snape's stern voice wavered at the end of his name- "I... think Mme Pomfrey's opinion is best."  
  
  
Harry turned sharply and stared at her, his green glass eyes cutting, sluicing through her, and she stepped backwards.  
  
  
"I think he's well enough to go to class," she said under her breath. Snape's eyes narrowed, and Harry wondered why it was now his preoccupation to swoop down into the hospital wing every few hours to hover resentfully over him. Guilt, maybe?  
  
  
"Okay." Harry couldn't manage a smile.  
  
  
"But I think he should come back and sleep in the hospital wing for another couple of nights, as long as we... as we have the room..."  
  
  
Why are they talking about me in the third person, Harry wondered. Am I dying? Those who are most near the end of their lives are often spared from direct conversation, objectified, idealised, and projected into the future or past as if they didn't exist in the moment. Third person. Like I'm not here at all.  
  
  
He wanted to laugh. Somehow he thought it would keep him from making it to the Potions class, however.  
  
  
"My class begins in five minutes." The voice of Professor Snape had an odd ringing quality, like sombre bells, as if he spoke from between his eyes, directly from his mind without interference or risk of misinterpretation through the use of clumsy tools like mouths and tongues. "I will expect Mr Potter to arrive late then, if he thus has your vouch of approval... though we are well accustomed by now..."  
  
  
Swoop, and he was gone. Harry chuckled now and Mme Pomfrey looked frightened in her sudden confinement with her black-haired patient.  
  
  
  
+++  
|malfoy|  
+++  
  
  
  
And the class began and you weren't there. I spent ten minutes with my head turned away and my steeley eyes locked on the chair where you should be sitting.  
  
  
"Malfoy, your teraweeds."  
  
  
The wooden stand at the back of my desk was still half-filled with vials from last class. The silver liquid stared at me with unseen eyes diffused into the mercurial swirls. Tempting was not even a viable word... it was a push, as if the decision were unquestionable...  
  
  
I fingered one with an outstretched arm.  
  
  
"Malfoy, your leeches."  
  
  
And my fingers rubbed the cork that sealed the mystical waters in.  
  
  
"Malfoy!"  
  
  
"Yes sir?"  
  
  
Professor Snape had a soft spot for me. He'd never oppose me, it was almost as if...  
  
  
I slid the vial from it's slot on the stand. The left-most bottle, I took... my cauldron had born six vials of the stuff, I remember, one used to test [I shuddered], and this one here, in my pearly fingers, itching to be used, to be slotted into you, to unlock you.  
  
  
Like a liquid key to all that is you.  
  
  
"Malfoy, are you even paying attention to me?"  
  
  
"Uh... no sir, I'm sorry."  
  
  
"Leave. Go. Out of my classroom."  
  
  
That's a first.  
  
  
"Now!"  
  
  
Is he upset over something, maybe? The man has feelings, then, strangely enough. I slid from my chair and let my shoes click slowly down the rows of stiff-expressioned Gryffindors, eyeing me with cautious half-lidded stares. I left the room. It faded into the hall.  
  
  
There was a shock, when I turned around and saw you there.  
  
  
Potter.  
  
  
Harry.  
  
  
But you slipped into the classroom and turned your face away before I could say anything. A rush swept over me as you brushed by.  
  
  
For the first time I noticed the tradgedy in your eyes.  
  
  
  
+++  
|weasley|  
+++  
  
  
In the back of the Potions classroom, you appeared. I'd seen you before, looking asleep, forhead wrinkled like you were struggling with some intricate dream, a maze, a puzzle. But I didn't know what to think then, so it was a small surprise to see you now.  
  
  
"Harry!"  
  
  
"Hey Ron."  
  
  
"When did you wake up? Mme Pomfrey made us leave... you were out all day, we were worried..."  
  
  
"I know."  
  
  
"Herm's working on a special project. She'll love to see you're all right... what happened to you?"  
  
  
"I..." a shadow of dissonance darts across your downcast eyes. "I fell down. I don't know. Snape was there, he brought me to Mme Pomfrey... I really don't remember much."  
  
  
I look up instead of answering you. There are a million answers I can think of. Instead I study the looming Professor Snape as he studies you, and am amused and repulsed by the tenderness in his stare that I'm sure you'll never see. The guarded man. The veil of ice, the mask of stone. Armored against you as he watches like a ghostly father.  
  
  
You turn and start your potion. You haven't the instructions, though, so I think to help you, but you seem to have gone off on a vein of your own. You have last class's potion in your hand... and the potions left over from before, what are you doing? The vials, you slip into your robes. You're not allowed, Harry, you... You seize a long silver knife and you-  
  
  
"Harry!"  
  
  
Professor Snape didn't see what you were doing, your hand was behind the desk.  
  
  
The room looks at me. They look at you. But your hand's behind the desk.  
  
  
But there's something wrong, something wrong... you can tell. Your head falls forward and your wide vacant eyes are paralized in a sickening blank stare. I can't tell if you heard me or not, you just stopped, and the knife dangled between your limp fingers.  
  
  
There's a shock of red forming now where the blade turned against your palm. Beads of crimson form along the invisible line, bright crimon dew drops on your palm.  
  
  
Behind the desk.  
  
  
And no one else sees.  
  
  
  
+++  
|malfoy|  
+++  
  
  
  
I'm waiting for you in the hospital wing. I didn't realize you'd be coming... but now I know you are. So it wasn't intentional, just sad... and I'll close the white sterile curtains around myself so that you won't see me here.  
  
  
I lick the blood from my bottom lip. I bit so hard it ran. I didn't realize... I... made a mistake...  
  
  
  
+++  
|potter|  
+++  
  
  
  
I can't explain.  
  
  
I think Professor Snape guessed from my expression- I'd drawn my head between my shoulders and was rocking softly back and forth, breathing shallowly and uncontrollably. It was inconceivable that I'd hurt myself.  
  
  
No one saw. It was underneath the desk. I'd cut my hand in the standard place, the spot on the fleshy mound of the palm where blood for potions is usually drawn. But it wasn't for a potion, I just wanted to see-  
  
  
Snape guessed. He came flying over in a storm of black mercy and robes and with a firm warm hand on my back connected me to the room and led me out.  
  
  
You were gone from outside. But I think you knew. I think you knew I was sick again, sick again... always sick sick sick.  
  
  
Snape led me down the hall but I started to cry, not sobbing, but just numb tears escaping my wide half-blinded eyes. Connect. I kept trying to connect. I couldn't, though... couldn't justify that I was standing in the hall, falling to the floor, kneeling there with Professor Snape and creating all this shame I could never face... with the drops of blood slipping in perfect red stripes across my hand.  
  
  
Can't face.  
  
  
Going to the hospital wing and I know you know I'm going there. You never left me, I realize this- this that I couldn't realize before, you never left, you're still there... a little bit of you...  
  
  
Professor won't rush. There's something warm and comforting about him in this way; his cold resentment is only a neutral pillar now, and I'm leaning on him. He seems distracted as I curl around his arm and breathe, breathe, breathe.  
  
  
I can't stop breathing.  
  
  
It's coming hysterically, but soon it'll pass. So why do I care? I'm not in this moment anyway.  
  
  
I...  
  
  
I feel you again. In my head. Again. And the blackness eats away my vision, sickening me into sleep... but I fight it and this time, this time I stay awake. Awake to hear my breathing still. Awake to feel Professor Snape move next to me and scoop me to my feet.  
  
  
"I want to go to the hospital..." I shudder, and he nods.  
  
  
There's the empty promise that I'll be alright as he leads me up the stairs. There's the strange familiarity that he's watching me with scorn and concern that bothers me. There's something not right because you... you know where I am and I can't see where you are. What hold did you get on me when you were inside me... what did you see?  
  
  
I have no obsessions. I have only the lost thoughts of a hero's mask with a boy within, and a spirit that has fled humanity. I'm not part of this world anymore.  
  
  
I... can't stand sleeping in the dorms, I think, and laugh. Which is okay because I have the hospital now.  
  
  
I have.  
  
  
Okay.  
  
  
  
+++  
|malfoy|  
+++  
  
  
  
Every time it happens I go blank. And I see your face, and your eyes, and behind your eyes. Sucked in to you again, but not really, just a horrible dream where I can't see anything and there's only the abysmal darkness of YOU-  
  
  
And I awake and there's blood on me and blood on you.  
  
  
I watched him lead you in.  
  
  
Blood on your hand, Harry, and I can tell you that it was the most frightening thing I'd ever seen... because as the blood streamed off your hand, the blood streamed off my lips, and as the lights and shadows in your eyes were gently calmed to the image of an endless rippling jade sea, I felt my eyes go steady and clouded.  
  
  
I'm within you, and you're within me.  
  
  
I can feel you. Can you feel me?  
  
  
I peeked through the curtains. I'm not myself, I felt, and my body shook. No. I'm myself. I'm very much myself right now. It's beyond the curtains that there's you, and when you're fine, I'm empty of you. And when you're troubled, then your eyes become my eyes. Your storms become my tempests.  
  
  
I think I saw something you didn't see. I think that I saw the dreams that you'd forgotten, or the images traced in the darkness of your unconscious spells. I think, I think, I think... I can't figure you out, and maybe you can't either...  
  
  
Can I help?  
  
  
I'm suddenly afraid. The room seems empty and your eyes have vanished from my mind.  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
Trance healing of your subliminal waters  
  
Stills the clouded sea of dreams  
  
Unfathomable gems reflecting all the  
  
Secrets in your screams  
  
I could have waded out, called to you  
  
But I suffocated on you  
  
Choking down your suffering  
  
Your dreams, your liquid disease  
  
  
  
I'll make you better.  
  
  
  
Trace the marks;  
  
The curve of your neck;  
  
Scars I made with your nails.  
  
And read the etchings on the walls  
  
Of the caverns of your mind.  
  
  
  
+++  
potter  
+++  
  
  
  
I awake suddenly, and I feel... innocent... alone... ever-present... young.  
  
  
Different. But the same, still. Somehow. The bed stifles me with it's linnen confines and acidic taste of disease... there's a scalpel on the rack beside the cot and I just stare fixated licking my lips and swallowing the surges of need... to re-enact...  
  
  
It was nice cutting through my hand like that. I think about this, and think about what if...  
  
  
If I do anything now, I will most seriosuly have to ponder my sanity.  
  
  
Don't care, don't care... can't care right now, the moment is beautiful.  
  
  
I know why they call in the middle of the night. The space between consciousnesses, the dark empty spot where all the world flies away, it's the heart of Night... the moment when what is your world is utterly forgotten. I'm just a soul in the room, and nothing exists outside this endless dusk...  
  
  
An endless night that will protect me and free me from this dull continuum forever...  
  
  
I reach out and take the scalpel. I'm moving without thinking now. And I hear you stir in the bed across the room.  
  
  
What?  
  
  
I jump a bit, stiffen where I lay. You whimper. I forget about wondering why you're there, you're there. I cut. You jump. You cry. I'm fascinated.  
  
  
Again and again, into the soft solidity of my upper arm, destroying and mangling the pale perfect soft childishness. I'm baptized, I think, and my breath quickens, and I cry silently to myself out of joy and sudden surprising absolution, I'm free of it all.. free, forever changed... forever marred and no more of this world...  
  
  
You twist, I can tell. I can hear the swish of sheets.  
  
  
I get up and slide through the curtains around my isolatorium, and pace across the moon-drenched floor, liquid under the pale illuminations. Your bed... your bed.  
  
  
I open up the curtains because I feel you close to me, and hear you breathing, shuddering with every shocked exhalation.  
  
  
I stare.  
  
  
Your mouth is torn open by your teeth. Your arm is bitten through. There's stars of blood like bullets exploded over you.  
  
  
And I see your blood. And my blood. And the scalpel. And the teeth.  
  
  
And you. Staring at me. Afraid and hungry.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N: Yeah, slash next chapter. I realize they're OOC, kinda, that's cause I didn't set out to write a Harry Potter fic... they just sort of became the characters cause I'd been reading my friend's barrages of fiction, yeah...  
  
  
So, I mean, it's been a while since the canon. That's my excuse. :) If you want to spur me on faster or just make me feel good, why, i dunno... leave a review. It's good for you :) 


	4. and if i get through this know that i lo...

A/N: Yeah, not too fond of that last chapter, but this one's... well... slashy slashy! Finally, eh?  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Graffiti Writings...  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter Four  
[and if i don't make it, know that i loved you all along]  
  
  
  
  
  
  
+++  
malfoy  
+++  
  
  
  
I remember now why I hate you. Because you are my antithesis, you are my nemesis, you make me everything that contradicts me. My name, my face, my hardened shell of mother-of-pearl that's oh-so-smooth and unscathed... all this falls apart when you come into the picture, and I'm nothing, and nobody.  
  
  
You steal my identity, you steal my faith. You're too good for me to believe in you, too flawed for me to ally with you, too human for me to love you, you're simply you, a twisting, changing, mercurial paradox that should have no hold on anyone, and yet...  
  
  
On me.  
  
  
You rip open the curtains around my bed, with a sort of regretful anger that's instantly retracted. The solitary confines shatter and you're in here, like you always are, within me.  
  
  
God, I don't want to be thinking this but I am- I can't admit this but I already have, in the way I keep sweating in my sleep and twisting my neck around, trying to get you out of me, because you're touching me beneath my skin and speaking to me from inside my head.  
  
  
This started a long time ago.  
  
  
Go away! I haven't figured it out yet. And I'm going to do something stupid.  
  
  
But you stand over there and there's my blood and your blood all mingled against our pale moon-cast skin, our mistake.  
  
  
Our mistake. Your mistake.  
  
  
I stare but I'm too weak from all this turmoil to have any emotion come through my eyes.  
  
  
"Draco..."  
  
  
Is this the first time you've called me by my name? My first name, my... an electric shiver contracts my body and I close my eyes.  
  
  
Tears. Unshed tears.  
  
  
"What, what, what..." I'm whispering, and I sound a way I'd never have let myself sound to you if it hadn't happened like this, if you hadn't walked in in the middle of my weakness, my moment of uncontrol.  
  
  
"I..."  
  
  
"You. You stupid, stupid, stupid boy-"  
  
  
"ME!"  
  
  
"Yes! Don't you know what you've done to me!?"  
  
  
There.  
  
  
I said it.  
  
  
You blink. And you look for a second at me like you can't even see me lying there on the mess of crushed linnen with dirty hands and face.  
  
  
"Done to... you."  
  
  
You don't believe me, and I don't believe you... for the first time it seems to dawn on you that I'm lying in all my vulnerability in this darkened bed, completely weak, and that you've never... never seen me like that before... you seem ashamed all of a sudden, to be standing over me like this. You turn away.  
  
  
If it were lighter, perhaps I'd see you blush. But if it were lighter, you wouldn't be here. It would...  
  
  
Reveal you.  
  
  
I remember the vial in my pocket in my robe, and my hand goes for it- I curl upwards and look away from you as I conceal my gesture, and secure the thing, cold as ice, in a claw-like fist. I don't know what I could do with it, but...  
  
  
"Draco," you mumble, and I wonder if anyone else is in the ward. I doubt it.  
  
  
"Look, Potter, if you've come to see me in the middle of the night in a hospital bed, I doubt it's a curtosy call. What do you want from me?"  
  
  
"You were crying."  
  
  
"I never cry. I was only biting myself." I flash an insane smile at you, and you twitch. It must look so familiar to you, Harry...  
  
  
You're beautiful.  
  
  
Stop thinking, I tell myself, before I forget you're there and lose myself in the chaos. So I slow. Breathe. Breathe.  
  
  
You're beautiful.  
  
  
Breathe.  
  
  
You smile uneasily, as if I'd said something aloud that I shouldn't have, but a shadow passes over your face as the curtains toy with the wind and when the starlight alights upon your face again, the look is gone.  
  
  
"Something's wrong, Draco. Something's... changed... the potion, it made us... somehow..."  
  
  
It's an easy secret to keep, Harry, that this started in my mind long before it started in yours... that long before you took draughts of my potion, I was drunk on you.  
  
  
"I know."  
  
  
"I cut myself and you did this. At the same time. I always know where you are, it's a presence in my mind... you left something inside me with your DAMN POTION!"  
  
  
"Don't scream, Harry..."  
  
  
How unlike me to say something that imploring, but you look strangely at me with pain in your eyes, instead of reproach.  
  
  
"I give up."  
  
  
"What?"  
  
  
"I... I tried... Draco, this is hurting me, to have you half inside me like this. I know you hate me, but you can't keep going like this, it's hurting you too."  
  
  
"I know."  
  
  
It's a whisper.  
  
  
"Can you just... stop? Stop it? And go back to like before?"  
  
  
"No... I... don't... I don't know how."  
  
  
There's a still understanding between us that's solving nothing. The night goes on and on and on, forever, and forever, and forever... there's a stillness as if time will stay suspended for us in this moment. You turn and slide onto the tumbled pile of sheets, sitting too close to me. I feel your body warm where it leans into the mattress, into my side where I lay.  
  
  
I sit up. But it's still warm. And this is new.  
  
  
"Snape has the antidote, maybe if I drank more of that... but it didn't fix it the first time, this isnt' the same..."  
  
  
I nod, but you don't see.  
  
  
"Draco, what happened to you when... when I drank it? What did you see?"  
  
  
I don't answer, not yet... we have all the time to wait, after all. The night goes on and on. And I can't speak. I can't speak...  
  
  
I can't... speak...  
  
  
  
+++  
weasley  
+++  
  
  
  
Stepping out from the mesh of curtains, and the room is dark. There's no mystery in leaving you now that you've left... I wander across the carpet and slip into your bed.  
  
  
It still smells and feels of you, the clean cotton smell that's so unmagical but so much more human. I slip into your dreams. I lay across the cold length of your blankets so long unslept in...  
  
  
It's only the second night.  
  
  
And...  
  
  
I sometimes betray you just a little and read the book beneath your pillow. I make myself think that you leave it for me, though I know you don't. Poems, scraps, thoughts, little fragments of you that you record like a simple Muggle, but it captures you so well... more than any potion or magical enchantment of memories, any moving photo...  
  
  
I move the crimson pillow and there it lies, the crushed bits of paper you leave behind you, a trail of thought dying off where you disappear... there are extra papers tucked into the pages, some folded and bound, others loose, chosen moments you record and freeze for me. It's a beautiful collection, I think... though you've never showed me yourself so I can never tell you.  
  
  
I'm such a lonely spy, yet it's you... I can't be alone, I have your diary in pieces here.  
  
  
With trembling fingers I flip open the heavy cover and turn the pages until I find the writing scratchy and tormented... and feel for my wand.  
  
  
"Lumos."  
  
  
A warm glow brings to life... this.  
  
  
Here, I read. Your secret. Which is my secret.  
  
  
'I can't think. I can't think. I can't. Think. Here. In this room, where I've been trapped and breathed upon for YEARS now, YEARS. The Prefects deserve their sanity? Given their own rooms... God, God, God... every night I think and think and think and think in circles over and over, reading all my old thoughts for a few seconds before plunging my quill into the ink and starting a new parchment.  
  
  
I hate this routine. Free me from it, any way you can. God, God, God... and I'd tell you, Ron, but you sleep every night while this happens to me. COME THROUGH THOSE CURTAINS. God, come into my bed... and listen to me so I can say and scream all these things I'm writing, God, God, God...  
  
  
God...'  
  
  
The paper makes a scratching noise against the others as I flip it aside.  
  
  
'I had a dream. It scarred me. He lay before me cut and bruised and beautiful, a porcelaine corpse, a doll... and I knelt over him and kissed the blood tears from his eyes and the wet crimson from his hair and I wept and wept...  
  
  
I awoke with tears in my eyes. This secret dream, I... God... Draco, I understand your evil, it's mine, it's all mine. You've become so silent and I want to tear you apart and plunge a sword into you, rip you apart, destroy you...  
  
  
I want you. Where are you. I know... I think I do... I can feel you laying awake in your dormitory, and it's a haunting thought that won't leave me. I want you, I want you, I want you. Not in some hollow sexual way, to use you, but to have you, and posess you, and *understand* you. Because you're me and I don't understand myself.  
  
  
God, I know, I know... I know... I think, I think, I think you can solve all this... broken and beautiful, and understood...'  
  
  
I stop.  
  
  
I reread the thing, and breathe.  
  
  
You... is love the word? Numb... breathe... numb... and I scratch the parchment violently with shaking hands, willing to rip the thing into a million pieces... shouldnt' have read it, shouldn't have read it... and I... can't... admit... that I don't understand you- a tear slides down my face and it's contorted in a grimace of refusal. But I turn the pages over and there's a single parchment leaf left, a single one...  
  
  
This night two nights ago. Breathe. But read it. To know. To know you.  
  
  
[Because I do know you. More than he ever will.]  
  
  
'He was inside me.'  
  
  
A single line. But I turn the thing over, and scrawled over the back like a last will and testamant, his imploring, beautiful voice splashed in black ink onto the page-  
  
  
'It was a mistake to want him, I thought, over and over as I felt him deep inside me, too deep to fathom... it was a mistake, a mistake, a mistake... but it's a wonderful, unimaginable mistake, a perfect beautiful mistake... an amazing mistake...  
  
  
I am a mistake. And you are a mistake.  
  
  
And maybe our living is just to fulfill it... because it feels horrible... and the agony... it's so... and... I...  
  
  
But it feels so awful it feels... amazing, divine, holy, destined... what did you see? What did you see within me? I didn't want you to leave, but all my mind could scream was for you to get out... that's just it... I want to be within you too, it's what I want, I know now...'  
  
  
The potion. You took the potion with you today when you left the class. Oh God... oh God...  
  
  
God...  
  
  
'I can feel now, in this possibility... there's absolution. I have to... just be near you for this... there's a possibility now, that maybe you saw something you understood...'  
  
  
...  
  
  
No.  
  
  
  
+++  
potter  
+++  
  
  
  
I've found you. Searched so long and now stumbled on you. Never had a plan, just an irrational longing, and I ignored it in the day so long it finally found me in the night...  
  
  
And I found you.  
  
  
You're shivering.  
  
  
"You're shivering."  
  
  
You look up with the eyes of a beaten animal, distrustful, hateful, resentful, hurt... hurt beyond hurt...  
  
  
You're propped against the wall and I'm sitting on the bed; I move closer to you and instinctually lean close. I was thinking, thinking I could wrap my arms around you just to feel what you're like, so stiff and cold, and needing to be wrapped by someone... but I can't, so I don't. And I try to will my warmth into you but know I can't.  
  
  
If I fuck this up... if I can't get through to you... if you hate me, or if you haven't changed, or aren't the person I think you are... if this turns out to be something I made up in my head, despite how real your breath feels on the nape of my neck, then please, please know... that I loved you...  
  
  
Loved in the way that high school boyfriend-girlfriend couples can't.  
  
  
And crushing first years can't. And old wizened teachers can't... and soldiers and mothers and fathers and fighters and death eaters and deserters can't...  
  
  
In a way that only I can love you. That seperates us from this tiny world.  
  
  
Because beyond this, I don't believe in love, I know that.  
  
  
"Harry-"  
  
  
It's real, it must be.  
  
  
"I saw..."  
  
  
I'm scared to look because I know the silver stare, the piercing glint of tear-stricken steel, slate, something so hard. I know it, dream it, feel it on me when you aren't there but when you perchance alight your thoughts on me... (how amazing it feels). I don't want to look back at you and be afraid, with you not knowing what I'm afraid of. I don't want you to know my weaknesses, though you already do... the glimpse you caught of me tore everything down.  
  
  
But you look at me the same, still. Like nothing's changed, like you've seen it all before.  
  
  
"Me."  
  
  
You...  
  
  
"I saw me. I was lying down, and I was cut all over and bleeding... and you knelt by me and breathed near me... I could feel it lik eyou were -right- -there-"  
  
  
You've looked away, but I'm too paralyzed to... to think... you know... you know it all. My defences ripped away, my weakness bared, please don't hurt me, please don't reveal me for this...  
  
  
I can't be found out. Not by you. I need you.  
  
  
"You..."  
  
  
I try to part my lips, to stop you, but you stop yourself. I'm afraid and looking at you. You see it all. You see right through me. Please don't ruin me now... please be everything I prayed for, even though... you're probably not... please, please pretend it never happened, forget it now... forget me, forget me...  
  
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
  
I am. I'm so sorry. The warmth of you... turned towards me... now feels like a disgusting violation of you, and I can't stand it... can't stand it... can I take away your breath? I have to get away. Get away. Make it... further somehow...  
  
  
I'm stumbling and you're watching.  
  
  
I'm drowning and you're laughing.  
  
  
I'm kneeling before you and you smile at my prayers, but you don't see... how strange it is.  
  
  
God.  
  
  
God, God, God...  
  
  
So I slip from the bed and try to leave, but you grab me, and I can't stand the thoughts anymore, the haunting possibility that strains a second around an eternity-  
  
  
"Harry, don't go!" You squeal. Desperately. What could you want from me?  
  
  
You pull me down and kiss me.  
  
  
...  
  
  
  
+++  
...  
+++  
  
  
  
I don't want to understand this horror  
  
There's a weight in your eyes that I can't admit  
  
Everybody ends up here in bottles  
  
But the nametags the last thing you wanted  
  
As the world explodes we fall out of it  
  
But we can't let go because this  
  
Will not go away  
  
  
There's a house built out in space...  
  
  
I can't see that thief that lives inside of your head  
  
But I can be some courage at the side of your bed  
  
I don't know whats happening and I won't pretend  
  
But I can be your...  
  
  
Someone help us understand who ordered  
  
This disgusting arrangement with time and the end  
  
I don't want to hear who walked on water  
  
Because the hallways are empty and the clock ticks  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
Through the darkness you couldn't see a thing.  
  
  
But the two bodies were there. The night traced faintly their outlines against the misted black and grey, the moon, the shadows...  
  
  
Entwined, they danced motionless, perfect within each other... crying... spinning still...  
  
  
Harry stiffened as the kiss hit, falling into himself as the pale boy, so insubstantial in the airy starlight, like the starlight itself, crashed into him. In the empty silence of the place, you could hear his breath end sharply-  
  
  
And shudder with realization... as he went limp into the arms of moonlight.  
  
  
The silver-haired boy curled around him, and they... couldn't explain it, so they stayed for a minute, for ten minutes, for an endless night within each other, their mouths a single link, locked in an unspoken word. And from one other they were drinking desperately the warmth from their bodies they couldn't possess.  
  
  
Harry's arms clung desperately around the thinness of the boy, and tasted blood on his lips, and cried... this suffering I've brought upon you... and all you've seen...  
  
  
I want to know you, within you and without you...  
  
  
Draco whimpered...  
  
  
And he laced his white fingers through the black hair. And they bit back their tears a little more. Because it stung.  
  
  
A perfect flaw to all their plan. A bitter desperate mistake.  
  
  
  
+++  
  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N: Sorry, no smut, I don't write it... somehow I think the whole crazy solice-finding would be a bit cheapened if they had raging monkey-sex right then and there in the hospital ward... ah well...  
  
  
Ah yes, the chapter titles are not mine, if you haven't recognized them... the first three were from A Perfect Circle (Maynard James Keenan from Tool... or god almighty, rather. If you've for some reason been living under a rock these last couple of decades, come on out, download some of their stuff, it's... as good as Jesus, I don't know. @_@)  
  
  
And this chapter title was from Our Lady Peace. Also, the lyrics in the middle of the fic are from OLP too, 'Thief', amazing song, amazing band... cause I gave up trying to write poetry to go with this chapter, cause I... just... not in a poemy mood ^_^ Yeah, so... right, leaving. *teeters off* 


End file.
